Squibby, we're not in Kanas anymore!
by bhut
Summary: When the time flier makes an unpredicted stop in the cold North American desert of the Ice Age future world... things go downhill from there. A "TFIW" story.
1. Chapter 1

Squibby, we're Not in Kansas Anymore

**Squibby, we are Not in Kansas Anymore!**

Disclaimer: The TFIW characters belong to Nelvana or anyone else but me.

_A Brief Prologue_

As any experienced – or at least well-read – captain of any vessel knows, every crew, no matter how well inter-connected or well-experienced, tends to develop a version of cabin fewer after being cooped up for too long with just the same familiar faces for company for an extended period of time. Sadly, the captain of the time flyer, C.G. was neither well read nor overly experienced, but between her own luck and the fact that cruising through time and planetary space over millions of years was never near routine or monotony, she and her friends managed to avoid this problem with relative ease. However, luck is always a fickle mistress, and in C.G.'s case even more so than usual, therefore it was just a matter of time, pure and simple, before something like that happened...

_Chapter 1: We are off to see..._

"Would you look at that? Gelatine bars! Yum!" Ethan muttered sarcastically, as he, Emily and Luis were looking glumly at somewhat convalesced kelp smoothies as prepared by the time ship's automatic cook. "Honestly, Luis, for someone who wants to _keep_ their master fisherman status, you certainly let us down when you didn't catch any fish back at the Northern Ice!"

"It's- it's not my fault," Luis spoke back for the sake of avoiding eating the gelatine bar. "As I was catching the fish that crazy northern flightless bird came through the ice hole and snapped our fish!" He paused. "I blame the squibbon. It probably was his funky octopus smell that attracted that crazy bird in the first place!"

"Squibby doesn't smell!" Emily spoke up for the first time since the boys started to argue. "And the flightless gannetwhale is not a crazy bird either!"

"Sure it is!" Luis shook his head. "It's a bird that doesn't fly!"

"Neither does the carakiller and you don' call _it_ a crazy bird!"

"That 'cause it goes without saying," Luis did not back down – even an argument with Emily looked better than a gelatine bar. "In fact, you may say that this whole world is weird in that sense – I mean, remember back home? I am not the world's best outdoorsman, but even I remember that it was like full of birds' especially in spring and summer! All these swallows in the sky and robins in trees and those blackbirds in marshes..."

"Stop flaunting your memory by quoting Emily back me and her, techno-boy, and get to the point," Ethan rolled his eyes.

"Right. Well, we have all these crazy flightless birds and not one ordinary flying one. We got the seal-like gannetwhale and the carakiller who even got the snow stalker on the run."

"Now _that_ was crazy," Ethan interrupted Luis once again. "I mean, I kind of thought that if that snow stalker stood its' ground, those birds would have had it, full posse or no."

"Now you're being ridiculous," Emily spoke up, somewhat sharply than her usual manner. "The carakillers are seven feet tall – poor Snowball was less than three feet in height!"

"Ah! But I can prove my point!" Ethan said, straightening up with a twinkle in his eye that usually appeared when he talked about sports. "Let's talk carakiller first. Luis – what can you tell Emily about it?"

_This cannot end well,_ Luis thought to himself. Apparently, Ethan somehow got into his "sports commentator" mode, and that was one thing that Emily could not really stomach: the animal-loving girl was not really into sports, especially more violent ones, like hockey or wrestling...

"Ahem! Luis! Earth to Luis! We cannot hear you – speak up!" Ethan gave the other boy a little friendly shove. "Come on, we need to get this discussion of carakiller versus snow stalker on the way!"

Luis looked at Emily, and realized, firstly, that he was right: the little red head did look rather pale now, especially considering all the tanning she and C.G. had done on their spare times. Secondly, he realized that he was right: Ethan seemed to be filling with that energy that always filled him whenever he talked about the more sports. Put together in his rather impressive memory this meant only one thing: a collision of characters, with him straight in the middle, as usual.

_Ceeg, you sure picked a wrong time to practice programming the cruiser's autopilot!_ Luis thought miserably-

"Ahem! Luis, buddy, don't go spacing on me!" Ethan shook the other boy once again. "Speak to us, man, speak to us!"

"About what?" Luis spoke, hoping in vain that Ethan forgot about their topic.

"The carakillers man, seriously!"

"Right, the carakillers."_ Sorry, Ceeg, I tried._ "They're the killer birds of the Amazonian grasslands, taller than a grown-up, really big heavy beaks, long legs, stumpy wings, almost like claws-"

"Whoa, slow down, Luis!" Ethan interrupted the other teen, "I'll take from here." He turned to Emily. "Now, as Luis here pointed out the obvious, the carakillers are big and strong, but they're big and strong like runners, not fighters."

Luis could not help himself. "Say what? Have you forgotten those big beaks of theirs? One of them broke the Chameleographic helmet, and if C.G. wasn't lucky enough to be wearing it-"

"Yeah, and that beak's probably the heaviest part of the carakiller," Ethan shook his head. "Posse or not, the bird still needs it to run down that basket-weaving monkey or some other lizard in those paths in the grass. To do that, it needs long strong legs, like the ostrich that it is, but a light enough body all the same. Come on, you saw professional long-distance runners on the sports news back at my place – strong muscular legs, but almost wimpy bodies? I say that the carakillers are like that, somewhat!"

"Wimpy?" Luis could not help himself. "If you'd seen-"

"I've been there, man, I've been there!" Ethan said, rather defensively. "If you haven't repaired the helmet and got it back on Ceeg, I would've probably burned down the whole grassland! However – think for a minute of that crazy giant armadillo critter we saw a couple of times in the grasslands. Unlike the monkeys, it is not very fast, but it is solid, with all the armour and spikes on its back. Obviously, if one gets an armour suit strong enough, you got nothing to worry in regards to the carakillers."

"Interesting theory, but what about Snowball?" Emily persisted.

"I am getting to it. Now, the snow stalker is some sort of an uber-weasel, right Luis?"

"The holo-deck told us that it descended from the wolverine which _is_ a relative of the weasel, so you're probably right, somewhat," Luis said, uncomfortably. "But so what?"

"So what?! Luis, we have tangled with the uber-weasel personally, it is the near opposite of the Amazonian big bird – short legs, limited speed, but a very solid body build and a nasty set of teeth: it is like the lovechild of the weasel and the sabre-tooth tiger! And everybody knows that sabre-tooth tigers rock!"

"Yeah, they rock," Emily said, in a much drier voice than her usual sweet one, "but Snowball wasn't a tiger!"

"I'm getting to that," by now Ethan was oblivious to Emily's clearly not impressed attitude. "Now look at their 'tudes. The carakiller hunts monkeys and lizards, all much smaller and weaker than it is – so it is just a bully. The snow stalker fights shagrats and flightless sea birds, all bigger and stronger than it, so it's a really mean fighter."

"And so?"

"So, I kind of think that if back then Snowball instead of running around caught its' bearings, wet the whistle with some water, stood the ground and charged back at the original carakiller face to face, that big bird would have ended up being carakil_led_ instead! Get it? Carakilled?" Ethan chucked, but the chuckle immediately stopped, as Emily abruptly stood up and away from the table, visibly angry. "Emily, what's wrong?"

"Ethan- Your jokes- You, you boys, you- Forget it!" Emily spat out, as she went out of the cafeteria room back into the main corridor. "I'll be having some private time; don't bother me until you really _are _sorry!" She left, her dramatic exit spoilt only by the lack of slammed door, and a faint "Oof! Sorry, C.G." from the main corridor.

Several moments later the cafeteria door re-opened again, and C.G., still rubbing a bump on her head, walking in. "What was that all about?" she asked the two boys in lieu of a greeting.

"I have no idea," Ethan sounded genuinely confused. C.G. looked at the other boy:

"Luis?"

Luis sighed. "It's like this-" he paused, and decided to go for the simpler explanation instead. "Ethan and I were talking about a carakiller vs. snow stalker conflict, and Ethan was saying that the snow stalker should have won over the carakiller easily enough, instead of running around the grasslands like a scared little monkey-"

"Well, maybe it was just disoriented and confused by this great new world it found itself in," C.G. said slowly. "Because otherwise, I don't know, but those great teeth... but I still don't understand – why is Emily upset? Did she think that the carakiller should win?"

"Well," Luis didn't feel really comfortable explaining to C.G. the peculiarities of Ethan and Emily's non-relationship, especially with Ethan in the same room, "it's not quite that-"

"Hey Ceeg, I'm guessing that the autopilot is fully functional?" Ethan interrupted the other boy.

"What? Oh yes, I have successfully completed the installation and activation processes of a fully-functioning autopilot of the time flyer vehicle!" C.G. replied proudly. Then her confident outlook faded somewhat, and she looked at the boys in her more usual, insecure manner. "Want to take a look?"

"Not a 'look' look, just to see what it's like in action," Ethan replied gratuitously. "How does it work, anyways?"

"Oh, I just check the coordinates system of the info-deck into the main computer and establish a connected between the two devices," C.G. said casually. Or rather, she attempted to do casual, but came on as a chattering nervous girl instead.

"That _does_ sound simple," Luis spoke with what he hoped was a cheery smile. "I'm surprised that you didn't do it earlier, with all the back-and-forth flying we've been doing."

"The autopilot doesn't work in time vortexes, Luis," C.G. said, blushing slightly.

"Um, I was talking about us flying back and forth from Northern Ice to Amazonian grasslands," Luis said, turning red himself.

"Yeah, we do that, don't we?" Ethan spoke up thoughtfully. "We do seem to follow a pattern. Here it is the grasslands, in the further future – it is the tropical Antarctic and the Northern forest where the megasquids live. I am guessing that your father and his friends back home have already narrowed down their choices somewhat about where they do want to live in the future and are now trying to choose the best one. Am I right, Ceeg?"

C.G. blinked, obviously caught completely by surprise by this revelation of Ethan's. "I guess," she finally spoke up, clearly unsure of what to say about this new development. "Next time father calls me on the communicator, I'll ask him that. Anyways, um, you wanted to see how the autopilot works right?"

Ethan and Luis exchanged looks.

"Shall we go and ask Emily if she wants to join in?" Ethan asked, unsure of himself for the first time in this flight.

"I don't think so," Luis shook his head. "As usual, when she gets angry at you, she does hold a long grudge."

"I don't understand," C.G.'s voice quivered slightly as it usually did when she did not understand something that she supposed she should have. "Didn't you say that you three were arguing about how a snow stalker would defeat a carakiller?"

"Not exactly," Luis said with a guilty smile of his own. "We weren't so much as arguing as-"

There was just a tiny bump in the time flyer's formerly smooth flight.

"Um, did you feel it?" C.G. asked, her nervousness increasing by a substantial fracture.

"You mean _that_?" Luis said, attempting in vain to cheer their friend up. "But isn't it normal? I mean, air turbulence and what-not?"

"A-air turbulence?" C.G. repeated, showing clearly that Luis' attempt at cheering-up did not work at all.

"He probably means bad weather, like the one back in the Great Plateau – or is more like in front, seeing as it is still in the future and all?" Ethan explained helpfully. This attempt also backfired rather badly.

"Luis, could you _please_-" C.G.'s voice was growing rather desperate.

Luis just rolled his eyes at Ethan and got on his feet instead. "Come on, Ceeg, it's probably nothing. The time flyer can probably take on any bad weather short of a meteorite shower-"

There was another bump, more noticeable and substantial than the previous one. Now even Ethan looked worried. "You know, we haven't really been in any kind of seriously bad weather before, especially in the cruiser itself," he said somewhat nervously. "You guys go on to the command room; I'll go and patch things up with Emily instead, okay?"

"You do that," Luis nodded absent-mindedly, as he followed C.G. back to the cruiser's front. "Just treat like a sports-related argument and you'll make some headway at least."

Ethan blinked, as the full gravity of his situation with Emily began to sink in. "Sports-related argument?" he muttered to himself. "That's not good, that's not good at all!"

There were only a limited number of places suitable for people on the relatively small time flyer machine, and naturally, the sleeping quarters of the four friends were probably the most comfortable spot. As Ethan stared at the closed and apparently looked doors to these quarters, he belatedly realized that the arguments that were merely inconvenient back at the hometown could be much more uncomfortable in a much smaller living space instead.

"Em!" he called-out reluctantly, "listen up!"

"I'm not talking to you, Ethan!"

"Yes, I know, I'll probably make it up to you – somehow," Ethan said, feeling oddly hot and uncomfortable with the discussion. "Listen, we've hit some sort of a bad weather spot, and C.G. doesn't sound too sure about her autopilot anymore, you know? So, uh, maybe you should come to the controls room and strap-in or something..."

"Ethan, if that's your way of getting me to-" Here Emily's words were interrupted by another air bump, this one quite noticeable by all of the cruiser's passengers. "Uh, I guess not. Is Squibby all right?"

"Uh-" Ethan realized that he had no idea where the small Terasquid actually was. "I think so. Why don't you come out and check?"

There was a pause and then the door to the sleeping quarters slowly slid open. "Well?" Emily said, looking unnaturally cross for her. "Where's Squibby- oh, there he is!"

Ethan looked around only to see the Terasquid jump around in his usual manner at the opposing end of the corridor. "Come on, let's get him and strap in – I didn't like the feel of that last bump."

"Nice try, Ethan, but I am still not talking to you," Emily shot back, but she sounded more concerned than angry now.

The time flyer shuddered all over its length. Feeling scared for each other and their friends, the two teens raced through the ship's main corridor, picking up Squibby along the way.

Inside the controls room (also known as the cockpit), there was panic and pandemonium, as an increasingly frantic C.G. fought the steering controls of the cruiser.

Warning! Warning! Warning! The autopilot is being overridden. Warning! Warning! Warning! Proper password is required!

"Ceeg!" Luis yelled over the metallic voice of the cruiser's main computer. "What is the proper password?!"

"It's, uh," C.G. yelled back, "two-three-seven-N-eight- arrgh!"

The cruiser shuddered again; the teens were barely able to stay on their feet.

"Guys!! What's going on?!" Emily shouted.

"Look outside!" Luis yelled back. "Oh, **snap**!"

Emily, Ethan and Squibby looked – and gasped. The sky was covered in blackish-grey clouds that were approaching the flying ship with a speed that was too quick for comfort.

Warning! Warning! Warning! Incorrect password! Warning! Warning! Warning! Automatic shutdown of all the systems in ten seconds! Ten, nine, eight-

"Luis!" C.G.'s voice grew shrill enough to override all the beeping alarms in the cockpit. "I want you to flip the switch next to the blinking red light to your right!"

"What? C.G., are you sure?"

"Luis, that's an order!"

Turning oddly pale, the swarthy boy reached out and flipped the small switch in question. The time flyer shuddered one last time, knocking Emily and Ethan off their feet and Squibby down onto the InfoStation, and the whole time flyer went abruptly down, plummeting like a brick towards land.

As Emily blacked out from the bump to her head, she heard some definitely disturbing noise. She could only hope that it was neither her, nor the cruiser about to fall apart...


	2. A rocky start

Squibby, we're Not in Kansas Anymore

**Squibby, we are Not in Kansas Anymore!**

Disclaimer: The TFIW characters belong to Nelvana or anyone else but me.

_Chapter 2: A Rocky Start_

Fortunately, for the time flyer's crew, their ship was made out of very solid materials, all the way to titanium and beyond. Nonetheless, it also was not designed to land in such a steep manner onto rather hard ground – and so the cruiser shuddered at the impact, and then... it was all over.

"Is everybody all right?" Luis called out in a quivering voice. "Guys? Squibby?"

"Thanks for asking, Luis, I'm fine," Emily groaned, as she emerged from the other side of the InfoStation, rubbing a rather big bump on her head. "Cannot though say that I have landed on something soft!"

"That's because you landed on _me_, and _I_ happen to be almost all muscle," Ethan explained, as he also emerged from behind the InfoStation, rubbing his right elbow and looking paler than usual. "For such a small thing you certainly are a hard one yourself!"

Emily whirled around, ready to pick up their argument where they left it, and then noticed that Ethan did not look as upbeat as he usually was: his right arm was purple with bruises. "I did that?" she said in a voice smaller than she intended to. "Ethan, you _are_ all right?"

"Right as rain," Ethan replied, trying to go for his usual cocky repartee, as he flexed his right arm – well, tried to at any rate. "Ow! Ceeg, I can't believe that I am saying this, but where you keep that first aid keep of yours on this ship? I feel almost as bad as in that first encounter with the giant wasps of Antarctic- Ceeg?"

Catching up on the lack of the response from their leader, Emily followed the boys' gazes towards her. The latter, namely C.G., was still sitting at the time flyer's steering panel, as stiff as a board. Too stiff for the others' liking, actually.

"C.G.? Girlfriend? Are you all right?" Emily's voice shook treacherously. "Guys? Is she-"

"She's in shock," Luis said, sounding slightly more confident than Emily does. "Uh, Ethan, I see that you don't feel so good yourself, but can you help me get her out of there back into the sleeping quarters? I believe she's in shock."

"Sure," Ethan nodded, his own concerns forgotten in face of his worry for their friend.

"I- I know where the first aid medical kit is," Emily added, feeling like she was going to go to pieces right now. "I'll wait for you guys back at the quarters-"

"What have I done?!" C.G. shot out of her seat like a rocket, her own face alternating between flushing red and paling whites. "Luis, what did I follow my orders?"

"Ceeg-"

"You- I- We- who was thinking what-"

Splash! Almost forgotten in all the hubbub by all the teens, Squibby dropped off the cabin's ceiling, and liberally sprayed C.G. with copious amount of water.

"Squibby!" Emily yelled, feeling exasperated towards her favourite future animal. "Your auntie C.G. is in no condition to appreciate your jokes right now!"

"No-no, Emily, it's okay – I'm okay," C.G. said, her face getting back to her normal color and behaviour back into the norm. "It's just that- Ethan, are you okay?"

"More or less, yes," Ethan replied cautiously, secretly feeling glad that things were getting back to normal, aside from his bruised right elbow. "But, Ceeg, can you tell us what happened back then?"

"What? Oh! Um-"

"Why won't Emily check your elbow out instead while C.G. gets her own bearings in order," Luis interrupted the stuttering girl. "How does that sound?"

"Fine, I guess," Ethan replied, frowning in consternation: something _was _wrong, or at least out of the ordinary even for the time flyer and its crew. The time flyer...

"Ceeg?" Emily spoke from Ethan's right, having come up with the same conclusion as the bigger teen. "What happened to the time flyer? Why is it so quiet... and dark?"

There was a pause, and it was broken not by Luis, but by C.G. "Uh, um, oops?"

There was another pause, and it was broken by Ethan. "What do you mean, oops? Luis, what did you and C.G. _do_?"

"Apparently, there was some sort of a problem with the autopilot," Luis slowly began, but C.G. interrupted him.

"Rather, people, I had a problem of running the ship with it activated. I told Luis to deactivate it, but the weather conditions of that time made it nearly impossible-"

"Hey, I remember – the machine was talking about an automatic shutdown or something," Ethan suddenly interrupted, but C.G. did not seem to mind.

"Yes, yes, and so I must have panicked and told Luis to launch the reboot sequence instead."

Ethan and Emily's mouths fell open. "Reboot?!" Ethan felt himself slowly getting angry. "C.G. Luis once had to reboot and reformat my computer – it took hours to do it."

"Oh, don't worry Ethan," C.G. replied, trying her best to look her usual. "We in the future went a long way with our computers: the reboot process will just take three and three quarters of an hour – well, maybe four complete hours, tops!"

"_And_," Luis said more firmly than his usual manner, "C.G. did land the cruiser, even if she had to do it by herself, manually, so ease up you guys, okay? Emily, you remember how you and I tried to fly the cruiser back when Ethan took Squibby for a joy-ride?"

"All right Luis, we got your point," Emily interrupted, "and I, for once, am not angry with C.G., just shook up a bit."

"Yeah, me too!" Ethan grinned, as his usual humour returned to him. "I mean, this is like this Discovery channel show, Mayday, which is about the plane crashes and such-like! Now we are in a real plane crash, and C.G. is a real hero pilot, as she saved us all from eminent death! Neat, hah?.. Ow!"

"Ethan, you moron, let C.G. off of it!" Emily snapped, even as she slapped Ethan at the back of his head. "Didn't you hear, she landed the plane manually!.." She paused. "Uh, Luis, what do you mean, manually?"

"She landed the plane – I mean the time flyer - by herself, without the usual help of her computers," Luis explained helpfully.

"She _can_ do that?" Ethan blinked incredulously. "I mean, she usually manages the computers? I mean-"

"The computers do most of the work around here," C.G. began to explain, "including navigation through the time vortexes, the maintenance of a stable temperature around the ship, warning us about any disruptions of the routine of the cruiser, and so on."

"Not to mention the radar, the sonar, the whole air-water-underground ship conversion and the like," Luis added helpfully. "Without it, we're literally blind."

"So, what are you saying?" Emily asked, as she began to lose the topic of their conversation.

"We're stuck here for about four hours, that's what I am saying," Luis shrugged.

"Oh. That can me and Emily go out of the cruiser and stretch our legs a bit while you get the whole thing working and beeping again?" Ethan asked.

"Sure!" This time C.G. answered first. "The cruiser's ramp is manually controlled after all. And, here's the Holodat if you'll need information on some new Amazonian critter!"

"But remember, it is currently running on its own juice alone, so use it sparingly, and try not to drain the battery too quickly," Luis couldn't help to add.

"Thanks!" Ethan grinned, as he, Emily and Squibby left for the greater outside.

Several minutes later, the cruiser's ramp went down. Fortunately, all the injuries that Ethan had suffered consisted of just one seriously bruised elbow, but while that would've laid hypochondriac Luis for days in the sleeping quarters, in Ethan's case it was shrugged off without much concern. Still, for Emily was obviously concerned for the bigger boy, Luis and C.G. also gave them the tractor beam, warning them once more to use their gadgets sparingly for the next four hours at least. Then – Ethan and Emily (and Squibby) were off.

And immediately nodded that something was not quite right – again.

"Emily?" spoke-up Ethan after the three of them walked for several minutes in silence, interrupted only by Squibby's delighted squeals as he and the two teens tossed an impromptu Frisbee between the three of them, "have you noticed that things are not right out here just as much as they are wrong back in the cruiser?"

"If this is a ploy to ensure that I don't remember getting mad at you, then it is not working," Emily said sternly. "I do owe you one for landing on you, but I am still mad about you talking about Snowball in such a manner!"

"Right," Ethan muttered, suppressing an urge to restart that argument with the short girl about the fighting qualities of the carakiller vs. the snow stalker. "But you're onto something here, and by here, I mean _here_."

"Hah? Ethan, you're not making any sense!"

"Right. Okay then, Emily, take a look around and tell me what you _don't_ see here."

Emily blinked and looked around. "I _don't_ see here..." and she drawled off. Actually, nothing seemed familiar around them, like any familiar landmarks, animals, or plants. Instead, around them lay a vast grey expanse of land practically devoid of any vegetation, quite different from what Emily and others began to expect from the Amazonian grasslands.

As Emily just stood there, staring and blinking as her realization hit, Ethan decided to bring his point home. "Hey Emily, if these are the Amazonian grasslands, then where's all the _grass_?"

Emily shook her head, bringing her mind back to the place at hand. "Ethan, don't joke about this! We're lost!"

"And I thought _Luis_ was panicky. Emily, our ride's right _here_!"

"I mean we're _all_ lost, Ethan!" Emily huffed back. "We must go back and tell Luis and C.G.!"

"Relax," Ethan rolled his eyes at the small red head. "Luis may be a scaredy-cat most of the time, but he isn't stupid or anything – but don't tell him I said that – and he probably noticed that we're not in Kansas anymore."

"You mean the Amazon grasslands."

"Whatever. That is probably why he gave us the tractor beam on the way out. Same with C.G. and the Holodat, right?"

"Right," Emily muttered, but she still was not as sure as Ethan was. C.G. seemed pretty much out of it when they had that conversation back in the cruiser's cockpit, and besides...

"You know, this is the first time when we got lost for real, not through a time vortex or anything," she finally spoke up. "Normally C.G. sounds like she's pretty sure of where she is flying us – guess that's what Luis meant when she was doing it all manually when she landed here..."

"Eh, who cares," Ethan shrugged. "As far as I am concerned, this is a great place for sports – no ice, no grass, no crazy birds or uber-weasels..."

"There you go again!" Emily snapped, beginning once more to get angry. "Why does it always have to be violence with you?!"

"Oh boy," Ethan groaned and whispered to Squibby in a mock-whisper. "I guess I forgot just how long Emily here can hold a grudge..."

"Excuse me?" Emily stomped her foot. "And what do you mean by that?"

"I mean, what is your problem when I talk about sports? You're not scared, are you?"

"Ooh! Ethan, I'm girl, don't talk to me like you would talk to Luis..." indignant, Emily threw the Frisbee that she was still holding away. The bright purple disk flew some distance away, hit a dune... and the dune exploded in a cloud of dusty sand, revealing yet another creature from the future.

Emily shrieked. So did Squibby and actually tried to climb onto Ethan for a change. "Girls, relax," the big boy muttered, even though he himself was briefly startled when the Frisbee flushed the smallish animal out of its hiding place. "It's just one of those big armadillo animals we saw several times in the grasslands. Guess we _are_ in South America after all."

"I don't know, Ethan," Emily shook her head. She too had recovered from her initial fright and was carefully examining the animal even as she slowly circled to the right of it. "It is a rattleback, all right, but it looks different from the ones we saw before. The body shape is different somewhat..."

"Maybe it's just a baby, and we saw adults, or it's a girl, and we say boy giant armadillos before," Ethan shrugged, losing interest now that he knew what he and his friends were facing. "Emily, come on – these creatures are harmless, Luis had C.G. find it out back at the InfoStation the first time we came here-"

"Ethan?" Emily's voice became firmer, telling the bigger teen that she was not impressed by his reasoning. "This rattleback has a _tail_!"

There was a pause as Ethan thought Emily's statement over, and found it rather wanting. "It has a tail?" he repeated, talking to Emily as if she was mentally off her game. "So what?"

"The rattlebacks we saw before _didn't_!"

"_And_-?"

"Never mind!" Emily almost scowled with exasperation as she pulled out the Holodat. "Let's see what this strange rattleback is!"

The North American Rattleback is a close relative of the South American Rattleback. It differs from its relative by having differently shaped keratin scales, longer legs and a more herbivorous diet, spoke up the voice of the Holodat before dying.

The two teens exchanged glances. "_North American_ rattleback?" Ethan said, clearly shocked. "But this means-"

"That we are-"

"In _North_ America!" the two teens finished together and exchanged another look.

"C.G. and Luis need to know about this, and quickly!" Emily exclaimed.

Ethan blinked. "They do? However, what is the rush? I mean, so what if we have landed in the future Mexico or California or something..."

"Ethan! I am still mad at you, remember?"

"Oh, fine!" Ethan muttered crossly. "So, does this mean that you want me to run back to the ship while you keep your new friend company?"

"Yes!" Emily said brightly. "This poor guy is obviously lost and hungry – I and Squibby will look after him until you get back!"

"Great," muttered Ethan, but then the little rattleback looked at him, and Ethan felt his own heart melting, as usual, when he was confronted with a cute little animal. "But, don't leave without me – it'll be too embarrassing for you to get lost within the sight of the ship."

"Yeah, yeah, just go already," Emily said, more bemused than angry by now.

Muttering something under his breath, Ethan took off.

"So, uh, Luis?"

"Yes, Ceeg?"

"Thanks for supporting me and my decision back in the conversation with Ethan and Emily."

Luis rolled his eyes. "Ceeg, relax. Us techno-geeks have to stick together and all, and besides, you are the captain of this ship, or time flyer, or whatever, and you probably saved us all when you got me to reboot this autopilot of the ship's main computer systems back in the storm."

"Yes, but if I had installed the autopilot correctly, we wouldn't have to reboot the main computer systems in the first place!"

"I suppose so, but Ceeg, if you want to worry about something, we don't you think about what you'll tell Emily and Ethan once they realize that we're not in the Amazonian grasslands."

"We're not? But I thought that we were!"

Luis froze and looked C.G. right in the eye. "C.G., did you look outside. This doesn't look like the grasslands at all – there's no grass, and the weather feels much cooler, as well."

"Cooler? You mean this as an adjective or a verb?"

Luis did not roll his eyes even though he wanted to. "I mean, C.G. that it is not as warm here as it is in the Amazon."

"Well, the cruiser's internal temperature regulators are currently inactive! Naturally it is not as warm as it is usually is!"

"Yes, this means that the temperature here matches the temperature outside, and in the grasslands, the temperature _is_ quite warm, especially if compared to the northern ice! But here, it is not as warm, even though the ice is still colder, so we must be somewhere between the two places, but not in the ocean or something."

"No, this cannot be!" C.G. stubbornly shook her head. "I put in the data into the autopilot program – we are in South America somewhere, just not at the grasslands..."

Before Luis could reply, Ethan appeared in the cockpit, all flushed and out of breath, as if he was running for a long while.

"Guys, you won't believe it!" he said, excitedly. "We found a new animal, and Ceeg, your Holodat tells us that it lives in North America! Cool, hah!"

There was just silence, as the other two teens just stared at him, and digested his news.


	3. The land of brave and free

Squibby, we're Not in Kansas Anymore

**Squibby, we are Not in Kansas Anymore!**

Disclaimer: The TFIW characters belong to Nelvana or anyone else but me.

_Chapter 3: The Land of Brave and Free_

For a too-brief moment there was just silence in the cruiser's cockpit, and then C.G. broke out in objections to Ethan's statement:

"No! No! Not! I personally put down the coordinate for the grasslands, and they are, I remember distinctly, located in _South_ America, not _North_ America – the two are two distinctly different continents!"

"Look," Ethan replied, maybe a bit too abruptly, but then again, after Emily acting up earlier in the day, his own temper was being slightly frayed as well. "Here's what happened. You two remember that armadillo creature we encountered several times in the grasslands?"

"Affirmative. You are talking about the rattleback, a native species of the South American continent of this time."

"Yeah, that one. Anyways, I, Emily and Squibby have found another one, only different."

"How different? Maybe it's just a baby?"

"Yeah, and I told Emily that, only she said that this one has a tail, and the ones back in the grasslands have no tail, and she whipped out the Holodat, and the gizmo identified the critter as the _North_ American rattleback, and so here we are, in Mexico or California or something, miles away from the Amazon and the rest of South America. Startling, eh?"

"More like impossible! I have downloaded the data directly from the InfoStation's databanks, I- I got to go and see this bizarre rattleback for myself!"

"I guess that's not a problem," Ethan shrugged. "We're about half an hour away, if you run, and slightly more so if you just walk and enjoy the desert view."

"We're not in a desert! It's... not hot enough!"

"Sure we are! There's sand, sand dunes, and some twisted trees – looks like a low-key version of the endless desert in the further future to me."

"I can't believe it... I am taking the dune skimmer."

"You mean it works?"

"Like the Holodat, it has its own energy resources that must be recharged after a while. Right now, this resource has been fully recharged and yet untapped. I am going to use it to see what's wrong with the rattleback or the Holodat or Emily."

"Right," Ethan drawled out somewhat sarcastically, ignoring, or maybe not noticing the hand signals that Luis was showing to him outside of C.G.'s field of vision. "It must be one of these three that have gone wrong. Of course."

"Exactly," C.G. replied, once again trying to adopt a gruff leadership persona, but not quite succeeding. "This all is clearly just a monumental misunderstanding, right Luis?"

"Ceeg, but what if your father calls while you are away?"

"He can't – the communications are also being rebooted like the rest of the mainframe, see?" C.G. almost grinned. "He simply cannot contact us right now."

"Woo-hoo, so we're on our own for real for the first time. C.G., you go girl, welcome to the wild side!" Ethan crowed.

C.G. just gave him a rather evil look, and Ethan remembered, somewhat belatedly, that the last time he tried something like that, C.G. almost permanently got stuck thinking that she was a grassland monkey, and the grasslands themselves almost got burned down to the ground as well. Not exactly a pleasant situation per se, and not the right time to remember this either.

Fortunately, C.G. decided not to remind Ethan specifically about this time, and just left, rather loudly with an in-your-face-point in her step.

The two boys just looked at her through the cockpit's illuminator as C.G. zoomed off in the dune skimmer towards Emily, Squibby, and the odd rattleback.

"That's both girls in one day," Luis muttered rather disgustedly. "Remind me, Ethan, how did you get so popular with girls back in our town?"

"Hey, I was the sports star!" Ethan said proudly. "When a girl asked me for a date, I saw no reason to hide this fact; really, this was one of my main features!" He sighed. "Except that Emily isn't very impressed with sports, is she?"

"And you find her cute, hah?"

"Well, kind of, but never mind her. What's with C.G.?"

"Leadership issues, can't you guess?"

"Yeah, but she usually isn't this tense... except for when she got nuts about caution and we got almost eaten by the snow stalker the second time."

Luis sighed, and wry look came onto his face. "Yes, and that time the glacier had almost collapsed upon us. I think I am going to make a wild guess and say that C.G. tends to worry about our well-being more than us – well, some of us."

"Oh," Ethan replied with an embarrassed chuckle. "I knew that."

"Right," Luis obviously was not buying it. "And how _are_ things with Emily?"

"Now that the rattleback is with us, it's almost back to normal. Honestly, I think that it looks a bit like our sports mascot – but don't tell Emily that."

"That's a good or a bad thing?"

"I don't know, but since today Emily has been on her anti-sports warpath, I guess that it's bad."

"Normally, yes, but 'normal' is not the way I would describe our lives since C.G. came into them, so maybe things aren't as bad between the two of you as you think."

"Gee, thanks," Ethan replied, "that's a load of my mind."

Luis shook his head and turned back to the view outside. "Maybe it is a good thing that C.G. hadn't gone on foot. The weather seems to be turning nasty again."

Ethan frowned. "It won't be a sandstorm or something bad like that, will it?" he muttered. "'Cause I don't think that sand and rebooting computers mix too well."

Luis just shook his head, and the boys continued to watch the dune skimmer and its driver, shrinking in the distance.

"So, little guy, you're a North American rattleback, yes you are, and a cute one too, yes indeed!" Emily cooed as the smallish beast just went around her, sniffing both the short girl and Squibby. "I'm not sure what 'gracile' means, but I don't see how Ethan could have confused you with your southern cousin. You two are _so_ different, you know? It's almost like Squibby confusing me and C.G. because we're both girls or something like that!"

It was then that the sounds of the dune skimmer reached Emily's ears. "Now why would Ethan- oh, hello, C.G.! I was just talking about you with our new friend!"

"Really? I didn't hear you," C.G. replied rather dryly for her. "Guess I have a lot on my mind... is that _it_?"

"That's not an _it,_ I'm going to call him Prickly!" Emily said excitedly.

"Looks more like a Scaly – there aren't any spines, just some scales, while on the rattlebacks we saw there were both spines _and_ scales," C.G. replied as she got off the dune skimmer and began to critically look over the animal.

Emily blinked and looked over the little beast with a critical eye of her own. "You're right! There _are_ no spines on Prickly after all – guess that's why Ethan said that little Scaly here looked odd even without the matter of the tail."

"The tail?" C.G. echoed the shorter girl.

"Yeah, right here, see?.. Hey, Ceeg, are you all right? You don't look so good!"

"I think I need to sit down," C.G. muttered to herself. And she did exactly that.

For several long moments, the two girls and two small animals were frozen like that in a stiff tableau against the equally unmoving background of the great grey desert around them. Not like the endless desert in the further future, the desert of North America seemed empty and devoid of all color, except that here the color was less golden and more cold grey, making it appear almost worse than the desert of the terrabites and garden worms; in fact, for a brief while it appeared that the two girls and the animals were the only living things for miles around...

Then Scaly just gave C.G. a nudge with its muzzle and climbed onto her lap. Though still young, the rattleback was still quite heavy with all the scales on its back.

C.G. blinked. "Emily, what is your new friend doing?"

"Nesting on your legs – isn't it cute?"

C.G. blinked again. "I cannot make my opinion about that – what we were talking about, anyways?"

Now Emily looked concerned and sat down next to the other girl. Squibby, who knew a good trick when he saw one, climbed into her lap and curled down next to the rattleback, who restarted sniffing the Terasquid with its muzzle.

"C.G.," Emily said softly, with concern evident in her voice. "Are you okay?"

For several moments it looked like C.G. would not answer her after all, but then the taller girl finally spoke up.

"I messed up. I crash-landed our ship, and got us on the wrong continent and now when my father calls... I let him down and I let you down and I almost got us all killed and-"

"C.G., I got your point," Emily said gently, interrupting the other girl's flow of words. "Yeah, you did mess up, but so have the rest of us in the past – like when Ethan and I went joyriding during that meteorite shower, or when Luis left those geocache out of radioactive material all over the world... Hey, I just realized – these events all happened in the future as opposing to here – so does this meant that those events have happened or will happen – C.G. what do you think?"

"Thanks for trying to change the conversation, Emily, but it doesn't change the fact that it's _different_ in my case, I am different from all of you-"

Emily stopped grinning. "Are you saying that we are all primitive here?" she asked in a voice that was oddly hard for her.

C.G. shook her head, realizing that channelling her father at this time was the wrong thing for all parties involved. "No-no, I mean that I have been trained to work with this machinery while you haven't."

"Hmm," her feelings mollified, Emily grew thoughtful once more. "By 'trained' you mean theoretically, not on the real thing, right?"

C.G. blushed. "I practiced on the flight simulator, you know!"

"And I'm sure that it was a very convincing simulator, _almost_ like the real thing – you know, the way that the false spitfire birds are _almost_ like the real ones? Imitation may be the most sincere form of flattery, but my mom always said that flattery was never a good thing, especially when it is too good."

"Uh, Emily, what's your point?"

"Um, what I was going is that you're not that different from the rest of us, C.G., you're still a kid and make mistakes, despite whatever practice you had with handbooks and textbooks and convincing simulators. I agree that occasionally that may not seem so great, especially with Ethan's stupid stunts, but is it really that hard to accept?"

C.G. muttered something that Emily did not quite catch, though she was sure that she heard C.G. talk something about her dad. Before she could ask C.G. to repeat herself, though, their communicators turned on.

"Girls," Luis managed to sound worried even on the communicators. "I'm sorry to cut in on your bonding time, but can you please come back to the flier? The reboot is almost complete, but from what we can see, the weather is turning nasty and we'd better all wait it out in the flier, okay?"

"Sure," Emily nodded, as she looked around and decided that she did not like the look of the clouds up ahead either. "In fact, we're getting on the skimmer right now – right, C.G.?"

However, C.G. was still sitting on the ground, looking helplessly at the rattleback that had closed its eyes, flattened the scales along its body..., and stretched out its body all along C.G.s legs, preventing her from getting up.

"Emily?" C.G. also was looking around with concern. "A little help, please?"

"I don't like this – considering that they have the dune skimmer they are taking way too long getting here," Luis muttered, as he paced back and forth through the flier's cockpit. "They ought to be here by now!"

"Luis, relax," Ethan nonchalantly replied, though privately he was worried himself about the girls and Squibby. "They have a little friend with them, remember? I'm sure we're going to hear from them right about now." Seeing that the other boy was still not convinced, Ethan pressed on. "Look, the flier seems to be working almost perfectly by now, all the lights seem to be on-"

"I'm just worried about them, all right?!" Luis felt like snapping. "This is North America in five million future years! Unexplored land! Here may be relatives of the carakiller, or the snow stalker, or-"

"Luis, relax!" Ethan felt shaking the smaller boy by the shoulders. "They got tractor beam _and_ are within our sight! They'll be fine!"

The communicator bands on the boys' wrists came alive with a beep at this moment.

"Hey, girls," Ethan immediately backed down, "what's with the delay? Our techno-boy is getting worried!"

"Yes, about that," Emily's voice sounded quite worried as well. "Ethan, we have a little problem here."

"What sort of a problem?" Luis asked, concerned.

"Nothing that Ethan's superior strength won't solve, heh-heh," for a change, C.G. sounded no longer angry, but rather as worried as Emily did. "But can he please hurry? The weather seems to be acting up, somewhat."

"I am on my way," Ethan said grandly, whose mood immediately soared again as soon as he heard about his 'superior strength'. "Indeed, I am talking and walking at the same time!"

"How about you stop talking and begin running instead?" C.G.'s voice came up a few octaves. "Luis, how's the reboot coming along?"

"Almost completed, and Ethan's off," Luis said, glaring at the bigger boy. "Watch him go!"

Ethan got the clue and went.

Meanwhile, the girls' situation could be actually considered comical rather than serious: the young North American rattleback just would not be budged off C.G.'s legs. Moreover, to add insult to injury, neither girl could get him off C.G.: C.G. could not get the right advantage from her position and the animal's scaly armour, and Emily just was not strong enough.

"One of my teachers, pfft, used to say that a fine thread separates tragedy from farce," C.G. stopped trying to push the heavyset animal off her legs and raised her hands to protect her face from flying sand and debris. "I think getting caught in a sandstorm because a scared little animal wouldn't get off your legs is located exactly on this thread. Emily, you should go and meet Ethan halfway on the dune skimmer."

Emily shook her head, her own hair flying in the rising winds and her own eyes stinging from desert dirt hitting them. "Uh-huh. I am not leaving you here to chance. Besides, Ethan may have 'superior strength', but when it comes to speed, he is not that super-duper, to tell the obvious."

"Your point?"

"Give him a bit more time. He should be right over here-"

"And so I am! Once again, I've covered a distance at the nick of time!" Ethan huffed proudly, as he appeared through the worsening weather, his face flushed from all the effort he put into his sprint. "So what snag my superior strength has to solve?"

"Get the rattleback of my legs!" C.G. snapped despite her best intentions. "It's cutting-off my blood circulation down there and its weight is preventing me from getting up."

With a titanic effort of his own, Ethan managed to prevent himself from smirking at C.G.'s predicament, and instead concentrated on lifting the rattleback off her legs. The creature objected to this action by rattling its scales and squealing loudly, but Ethan was not impressed.

"A heavy little bugger, but not heavier than our school mascot," he mused as Emily helped the other girl get on her feet. That was harder than it sounded, as C.G.'s legs were still numb from the rattleback, and the wind was getting stronger, strong enough to affect even Ethan's footing.

"And we're off!" he spoke up after a particularly powerful gust of wind almost _did_ knock him off his feet. "Girls, Squibby, I'm not Luis, but I think we should be getting back to the ship now."

"Not without Scaly!" Emily snapped. "He's still little; he won't make it through this sandstorm!"

Ethan and C.G. exchanged helpless looks. Given the circumstances, the situation was more than just unpleasant; it bordered on catastrophical. With Emily feeling so obstinate, what were they to do?


	4. Getting Back Up

Squibby, we're Not in Kansas Anymore

**Squibby, we are Not in Kansas Anymore!**

Disclaimer: The TFIW characters belong to Nelvana or anyone else but me.

_Chapter 4: Getting Back Up_

For several moments, Ethan and C.G. just stared numbly at Emily, until it became obvious that she was not bulging from that spot without her new animal companion.

"Emily, come on," Ethan tried to talk to the little red head. "Scaly obviously had weathered at least one sand storm – we've flushed him out of that dune, didn't we?"

"So what?" Emily shook her head. "The little guy was still scared, and besides, now he got _us_ to help."

"So what?" C.G. would not back down either. "Emily, we are not animal rescue operation. He is probably adapted much better than we to survive in the upcoming sandstorm are. We must leave or we will perish for sure!"

Emily wavered. She looked down at the smallish animal... who was trying to hug Ethan's legs, looking somewhere between dejected and pathetic. Ethan and C.G. followed Emily's gaze, and the fight just left C.G. "Okay," she sighed, "new plan. Ethan, take Emily and the animals back to the flier."

Ethan frowned, obviously not liking C.G.'s plan very much. "I don't know, Ceeg," he muttered. "The storm is coming on real fast. I may not be able to come back for you."

"I know," C.G. muttered, "but the skimmer won't be able to bring all of us back even without the rattleback, and I got a force field to protect me from the debris."

"So does the rest of us!" Emily protected, clearly torn between the rattleback, C.G. Ethan and the dune skimmer.

"Yeah, but I am the only one who knows how to work it in practice!"

"But-"

"No buts, Emily. Besides, I am heavier than you; the skimmer probably won't fly in any other combination."

"Oh, C.G., I _am_ sorry," Emily visibly drooped, as she joined Ethan and the rattleback on the skimmer. Squibby was already hanging on her back with all of his tentacles, long and short and both pincer-like arms.

"Yes, I know you are," C.G. said wryly, despite their circumstances. "Now go. The storm may not last long and we will all have a long laugh about today, ha-ha."

"Ha-ha," Ethan echoed back, as he revived up the skimmer's engine, noticing with concern that didn't sound like it usually did: a.k.a it may have began running out of energy or fuel or whatever it ran on – even they may not make it to the flier, and the wind no longer really permitted much movement on foot. If the skimmer's engine died before they got back to the flier even at such a short distance, then they all were in big trouble.

With a last, very sympathetic look at C.G., Ethan took the dune skimmer off.

"Where have you guys been?" Luis exclaimed in lieu of a greeting as he stared at the returning teens. "And speaking of where, this better be C.G. in the chameleographic helmet or something!"

"Sorry, Luis," Ethan muttered, still pale – slightly half way in the return journey the skimmer began to make some very strange sounds, similar to a car motor that was about to stall, and the bigger boy was still unsure just how they made back to the flier. "But C.G... she stayed behind, behind a force field – she intends to outlast the storm like the rattleback or something."

Luis blinked. "You don't kid, do you?" he spoke in a deceptively calm tone of voice. "You really left her behind, did you?"

"Luis... the skimmer is apparently dead – unless you know how to re-activate it, there's nothing that we can do!"

Seemingly unperturbed, Luis gave Emily a long look instead.

"Oh dear, you're not thinking what I think you're thinking?" Emily muttered, as she abruptly sat down in one of the chairs in the cockpit, and indicated to Ethan to do that as well.

The bigger teen sat with a frown. "Emily?" he asked. "What's about to happen?"

"Isn't it obvious?" Luis answered instead. "I'm going to fly this sucker!"

There was a pause, as Ethan digested this piece of news. He opened his mouth to tell Luis that this was much more like a suicidal mission even to his daredevil tastes – and shut up instead. Luis' normally wimpy face now bore a look resembling too close Emily's look, when she was taking a stand regarding some animal or other. In those circumstances, arguing with the small red head never amounted to anything good, and Ethan suspected that arguing with Luis in this situation would not be anything good either.

Instead, Ethan gazed at the smallish rattleback that still huddled at Emily's feet, looking about as poorly as Ethan felt.

"I knew that today was not going to be all right, I just knew it!" the sportive teen sighed. "Nothing has worked out as it supposed to, nothing!"

He said it loudly enough to be overheard Emily, but before she could ask Ethan just what he was talking about, the time flyer shuddered as it took off the ground – and shifted around.

"If this doesn't work, feel free to kick me around, guys!" Luis shouted over his shoulder to the rest of the crew – and then the time flyer flew.

Despite her earlier words and conversations with Emily and Ethan, C.G. was completely unsure of what she was doing out here, or if she was going to make through the sandstorm. By now, the wall of swirling grey sand had obliterated in a very literal way each distinction between the land, the sky and the horizon – and was pummelling C.G.'s force field with strength of four or maybe six megasquids. Normally, that would not be much of a problem, but with the time flier's main system frame still out, this meant that the power of the force field was draining fast, and once it was out, then C.G. would become defenceless or without any fall-back plans.

_Just what _was_ I thinking?_ C.G. mused, but her heart wasn't really in it, as she actually felt pretty sure that she had ended in this junction because the events of the day seemed to have conspired to ensure that nothing went right, starting with that snow stalker that snuck into the flier when everyone else wasn't looking, and ending with that rattleback which apparently lived on the _wrong_ American continent and could serve as a living testament to C.G.'s greatest mistake up-to-date: getting the continents wrongs.

The continents! As if somebody could confuse them, even if they were reading the map for the first time – and C.G. was not one of them. She had read the map hundreds of times; in effect, she helped to make the map, as she and her crew had flown over the future world dozens of times – but she still messed up. _And_ she was unable to determine that in time to prevent disaster, _and_ got herself into a ridiculous situation where a rattleback was determined to stay on her legs, _and_ unable to recognize the deteriorating weather patterns, _and_-

Suddenly from behind C.G. came a deafening, grinding sound, probably more loudly than a mega-sized colony of gannetwhales disturbed by a family of snow stalkers. Confused and not understanding just _what_ it was, C.G. turned around and stared into a blindingly bright light, as a misshapen shape, standing out darkly even among the swirling grey sandstorm, seemed to swallow her up.

"C.G.? C.G.? Are you all right?"

"I'm... I am alive, I think..." the taller girl muttered woozily, as she opened her eyes... and realized that she was back in the time flier's sleeping quarters, with the rest of her crew huddling nervously around her. "What had happened?"

"By the time the guys came back the mainframe was _mainly_ online, so I decided to risk it," Luis said.

"That is not possible-"

"I temporarily re-routed some of the systems to supply their share of power to the flight systems, and just went in your direction, trawling for you with the bottom ramp."

"Trawling?!" C.G. got up – and then she went down, as she hit her head on the upper sleeping bunk. "Ow. Anyways, that's not in the protocols!"

"Yeah, probably for all the grit and everything else," Luis admitted, guiltily. "We probably shall have to go back to Northern Ice for some more titanium as well."

"That bad," C.G. could not help but wince despite all of her bruises. "Ow!"

"Yeah, it doesn't look good, even if we don't have to replace it with new titanium plating or something," Ethan spoke up for the first time, as Emily, Squibby and Scaly nervously peered from behind him. "Um, Ceeg-"

"Look, I am not angry at any of you, I am angry with _me_," C.G. said with a sigh. "I am the leader, I should have taken the responsibility to check the weather-"

"Ceeg, I don't know how it is in your time, but in our time plane crashes aren't that rare, unfortunately," Luis said with a look of distaste on his face. "There's an entire show back then dedicated to investigating the causes of these crushes. In this case, though, the fault is mine – I must've pressed the wrong sequence of buttons-"

"Look," C.G. interrupted, "I grew up in the shadow of an ice age, for us weather-observation skills should have come naturally-"

"And they did, like when you save my and Emily's butts back in the further future during the meteorite shower," Ethan easily agreed. "The thing is, we usually have some fine flying weather – except for the occasional blizzard at the Northern Ice or at the Great Plateau further in the future, where we had no real accidents, by the way. The thing is, C.G., it is natural that you got a bit unworried about the weather, because of all the good luck. The fault here really is Murphy's."

"Whose? I thought that rattleback's name was Scaly?"

_That_ made all other teens stare at their captain. "You don't know Murphy's Law?" Ethan replied incredulously. "Come on, it's the law that stays that if anything can go wrong, it will!"

"My father probably would not agree with you," C.G. said thoughtfully.

"Yeah, but we think he doesn't really agree with us being on this mission, period," Ethan shrugged, then sobered up. "Uh, you don't have a problem with that, do you? Considering that we got you into stuck in the sandstorm outside and what the scaly rattleback being on our ship-"

"What?! He's still on the flier?" C.G. exclaimed louder than how she would have liked.

"Yeah, after Luis had scooped you up with the ramp and we dragged you here, we all kind of zonked out as well," Ethan shrugged. "I actually had to drag Luis here – he sort of fainted back in the cockpit!"

Luis turned bright pink. "Uh, Ethan," he began and then abruptly stopped. "Oh boy. I forgot to reroute the power back to the communications system. Ceeg, your father is going to kill us."

"M-maybe not," Emily spoke up for the first time, sounding quite nervous. "I think I have an idea."

C.G. exchanged brief glances with the boys and then gave Emily a small smile. "We're listening."

"Cassiopeia! What is the meaning of that prolonged silence! Why your communicator has not been responding?" the rather worried than angry face of Dr. G. appeared on the communicator screen as soon as it was re-powered once more.

C.G. exhaled. "Father, there was a small problem with the autopilot."

"The autopilot?" Dr. G. frowned in consternation. "What about it?"

"Well, while I was installing it, a storm had hit, and we were forced to stay grounded, rather than make the overseas flight."

"A storm? Interesting," Dr. G. appeared deep in thought. "We do have really little data about the weather patterns in the five million years' future. Cassiopeia, do you think that you'll be able to re-launch the weather satellite here, as opposed to further future?"

"Of course we will, father," C.G. nodded in agreement.

"Good, but there still remains the problem of our lack of communication. What else had happened?" the look on Dr. G.'s face suggested that he did not believe the teens' story as wholeheartedly as they hoped.

"Well, I decided to re-check the flier's piloting manual and realized that the systems were due for the obligationary check-up, so I launched that," C.G. said, trying her best to appear at ease. "Only apparently I made a small miscalculation and the autopilot got uninstalled, again."

"Oh, Cassiopeia," Dr. G. groaned back in the communicator screen, but again, seemed more relieved than angry. "Try to be more attentive to such details in the future."

"I will," C.G. nodded. "Sorry about this, father."

"Good to hear this and I still want more detailed reports about the babookari, over and out." And the communicator went dark.

The four teens simultaneously exhaled in relief. "That was still too close," C.G. said, "we must get to the Amazon grasslands as soon as possible."

"We will," Luis nodded in agreement, as they and their friends looked outside. Outside laid the great North American cold desert and it did not look any friendlier at night. "As soon as the light breaks tomorrow."

_The End._


End file.
